Will Mastercard transactions be more secured?

There are many possible advantages and disadvantages of getting of the patents registered. When deciding for applying for a patent, you should look at your invention and consider the risks of not patenting it against the costs of doing so.

Mastercard is a US Multinational company based out of New York, having worldwide offices, and headed by Ajaypal Singh Banga as President, CEO. It is not surprising to see that the revenue of Mastercard was US$ 12.497 billion in 2017,operating Income was US$ 6.622 billion and net income was US$ 3.915 billion. It had a total of 13,400 employees worldwide in December 2017.

Visa card, again a US based company, is headquartered at Metro Center in Foster City, Fresno, California, US. The company which is into Financial services was founded by Dee Hock and has worldwide offices. Its Revenue was quite impressive - US$ 18.358 billion in 2017 with operating Income of US$ 12.144 billion and net income of US$ 6.699 billion. This has been all possible with the strength of 11,300 (2015) employees worldwide.

Both the Visa and Mastercard are originally the card brands and blue-chip companies at the global level - we call them bank cards because they are issued by banks. Visa and MasterCard created a computer network as a way for banks to share information about cardholders and business owners electronically and to move money. Both Visa and Mastercard started initially as associations and their members were banks. Today, both companies have gone through public IPOs and their business structures are now decidedly for profit.

Credit card information can be stolen under your nose without your credit card ever leaving your possession. To protect the customer’s interest and for securing the card, Mastercard recently filed a patent for a new "publically accessible blockchain" to secure their users from credit card skimmers. As per source, card skimmers at ATMs and other points of sale steal $2 billion globally per year. Mastercard's new public blockchain seeks to remedy this problem by utilizing a method which first encodes an image of a payment card to the blockchain and then encrypts it with a public and private key. When a payment is made, this new system will use the private keys to decrypt the card image.  

By integrating this system with point-of-sale devices, Mastercard says that transactions would be secure, as the card need not be physically presented, and users need not be concerned about their payment credentials being "skimmed" from the payment device.

Mastercard has stated in the document -

"The transaction may be conducted via the display of a machine-readable code to the point of sale device, which may further prevent skimming as the reading of such a code can be more easily controlled via control of the underlying display; the display can be easily shielded and is often obscured when in a pocket or purse."

As per survey, per capita e-commerce spend in India stood at just $36.50 in 2017, compared to $2,270.70 in the US and $3,063.10 in the UK. In India, credit card penetration stands at just 2.8 cards (per 100 inhabitants). However limited availability of short-term credit, online pay-later tools provide significant growth prospects for the country’s e-commerce market. This will result in less frequent cart abandonment and increased online purchases.